


Seizing the Old Flame

by twinkling_titanite



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games)
Genre: Animal Death, Dehumanization, Eye Trauma, F/F, Imprisonment, Memory Loss, Self-Harm, Tooth Trauma, follows an undead who was freed by Oscar of Astora, not technically a chosen undead fic, the first two chapters take place before the events of dark souls, warning for use of the pronoun "it" for an individual of unspecified gender
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-15 14:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7225717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twinkling_titanite/pseuds/twinkling_titanite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The First Flame has begun to fade, and a curse of undeath feasts on the brains and bodies of people rich and poor. No one is safe from the Darksign's maw, for it plucks at the populace unbound by human judgment.</p><p>A destitute sellsword makes company with demure royalty, united as fugitives in a witch hunt for hollows. What starts as cold and frightful reception smolders into something sweeter as the night washes over them. But nothing glimmers for long in this world without being wickedly snuffed out by those who swim in its shadows. Whispers of a sinister bastille rising in the North grow truer with every mile through the mountains, and a mercenary is reduced to only her fading memories and a curious pendant. She will live on in spite for hundreds of years, clinging to the warmth of a promise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Belle and the Blade

A frosty mist whirled through the craggy arms of dead trees overhead, moaning and subsiding with pained exhaustion. The knight, Vjurla, limped through mud and sand as flashes of cold bled into the joints of her armor. She had no light save the moon and stars to guide her deeper into these funereal brambles.

Vjurla’s dark eyes winced back the harsh bite of sweat as she struggled to stay lucid and mobile after so many days of walking. The icy rain had ended just hours ago, allowing more visibility to her chilled breaths. She thought she had hit her limit much earlier, as the sun fell behind the trees, but her legs moved on their own, mechanically, carrying her limp upper body deeper and deeper into the forest. One odd root was all it took; the looped, half-embedded finger of a tree snagged her boot and sent her crashing into the wet muck. It was strangely relaxing here, slowing sinking into the silt. Her legs tingled and spasmed and she adjusted her cheek more comfortably. She almost thought to shut her eyes and sleep.

Owls hooted from the trees, looking down upon their sodden guest. Vjurla lay there, not quite asleep, not quite awake. The Darksign smoldered on her breast slightly as moisture crept into its ring. Not quite dead, not quite alive.

A tinge of fear bit her awake, remembering those who still hunted her and what fate may befall her if she lay immobile long enough for them to catch up to her. She spotted a ruined shack in the distance and moved toward it. _Better to hide while I think._

Inside, the pungent stench of wood rot filled her nostrils. She could see all the little mushrooms growing from a shriveled beam where the ceiling had crashed in some time ago. Silver moonlight poured over their shimmering caps, raising them ever closer to the cosmos like a magnificent mother. Her wondrous radiance made the dark corners of the shack much darker in stark contrast.

The structure creaked and whined under Vjurla’s weighty footfall. But it wasn’t the only noise filling the room. There was the howl of the wind…the owls again…and…she waited another moment, breath turned to stone in her throat… _Yes._ A small sound, harried and fragile in the darkness. Like a child crushing the fear back into her mouth with quavering palms. Coming from a pantry to her left. Vjurla thought not to approach the door without saying something first. “Frightened animals are always the most dangerous,” she remembered her foster father tell her once.

“Hello there. You have nothing to fear. I’m just looking to take a rest.” She spoke softly and with caution, waiting for a response, but she was met only with silence. She didn’t move from her spot. “I _am_ a sellsword, I will not withhold that from you, but my sword is sold to no one at the moment, and I’m laying it down.” Vjurla made sure to drop it from a few inches off the floorboards, not too loud, but just loud enough to assure the other person that her weapon was out of reach. “You can stay in there or come sit with me, I only want to rest.”

This silence was different, the breathing even less relaxed. Vjurla felt uneasy about sitting down, wondering if she was playing host to some kind of monster in there. “Are you okay? Injured? I can see to your wounds, though it isn’t my specialty…”

No reply. The air was thick, agitated. She thought for a moment how embarrassing it would be if she was only imagining all this. No food or sleep for days, it would come as no surprise if this was a fabrication of a deeply starved mind. Each moment churned on haltingly and hazardously like an unoiled machine, meaning she had not an iota of patience. She cast a tiny pebble at the door just to see what would happen, and scrambled five paces back in alarm as a dagger shot through the flimsy door almost instantly.

Vjurla readjusted her ears and eyes to the darkness, suddenly witness to the desperate sobs of a fair-haired woman as she frantically struggled to dislodge the 10-inch blade from the pantry door. Rather than a child, she was actually about the same age as Vjurla, maybe a few years older. There were some small patches of dirt on her hands and face but her blue-violet cloak still looked newly made.

“PLEASE DON’T KILL ME! PLEASE DON’T KILL ME!” she pleaded.

“No no no, it’s okay! Look, I’ll sit down! See? I’m sitting!” Vjurla tried her best to let the woman know she posed no threat and kept her empty palms visible as she lowered herself to her knees.

The girl was still convulsing with fear as she put her whole body into trying to remove the dagger to no avail. All at once, she let go of the dagger and put her hands over her face, struggling to breathe as she let out a pained whimper. Vjurla had trouble deciding whether she should go pull the dagger out for her or help the woman calm down, but waited an awkward length of time and ended up staying put. _Just relax and give her a minute to collect herself,_ she thought.

When the woman’s cries softened, she removed her hands from her face and made an expression as if she was surprised there was still life within her. The sellsword truly had not made any claim of her head. She made herself small and crawled closer to Vjurla.

“I…I am so sorry. These last few days, I have never been so scared in my life…” the woman said, looking at her hands. “Who are you, mercenary?”

“Just that; a hired blade. But I’m out of work, and I’ll probably just drop the whole profession now. Not that I’ll miss it. My name is Vjurla. I’m hoping to be taken in by the people who raised me, but I haven’t seen them in so many years. I hope they will remember me…” Vjurla trailed off, accidentally allowing some emotion to be seen. It is difficult to guard one’s self after so much running, starving, and isolation. But the honesty in her expression was warmly welcomed by the blonde girl in blue.

“You and I seem to be in a similar situation…” the woman whispered cautiously. She twisted her lips, wanting to say something but also unsure of whether her words will put her in danger or not. “Do you…are you… _afflicted?_ By a certain…” she was too careful with her words to be able to finish.

Vjurla nodded. “Yes, my lady. I bear the Darksign. I am Undead.”

The woman in blue sagged with reprieve. She put a hand to her forehead. “ _Blessed relief._ I was unsure whether you would see to my incarceration if we were not both…” she did not want to say ‘ _undead,_ ’ “…bearers of the _mark._ ”

She held out a dainty paw to the mercenary. “I am Florabelle of Astora.”

Vjurla took her hand…“Truly a pleasure to meet you, miss”…and boldly kissed it before letting go. Florabelle blushed as she withdrew from the handsome dark-haired knightess. Any fear that remained from their initial meeting had completely melted away.

“Let me retrieve that for you,” Vjurla said, standing up. Florabelle hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about until she turned around to see where the armored woman was headed. Vjurla placed her hand on the grip of the dagger and plucked it out of the wood with remarkable ease. The blade was forged of beautiful woven steel with a perfectly unchipped edge. It seemed more a decorative knife than one for fighting. She held its point between her thumb and forefinger and bent low, extending its handle toward Florabelle. Even its sheath was beautiful – lavishly crafted of the highest quality crystal lizard scales, it glimmered dully in the moonlight. That knife was likely the most expensive thing Vjurla had ever touched.

“Thank you, kind knight,” Florabelle said, scooting against a wall as she tucked away her dagger. “I did not expect to find kindness in these wilds.”

Vjurla nodded and smiled. _How quick she is to trust me… We truly come from different worlds. How lucky she is to have found me and not some half-gone cretin with a thirst for souls in this battered shack._ She let go of the thought and sat beside her, a view of the mushroom-infested beam glowing two paces before them.

Florabelle gripped a corner of her cape softly like a tail and lowered her gaze to the boots on her feet. She was quiet for a while, allowing her pulse a moment to slow down. Vjurla peered over at the girl to her right, who suddenly opened her mouth to speak. “One day I found myself forgetting the smallest things. _‘Dear Florabelle, but you’ve already eaten your breakfast! Did you want another omelette?’ ‘Oh dearest Florabelle, you silly girl, you never lost your bracelet; it’s been on your wrist this whole time!’_ Nothing too suspicious. But then I started forgetting names. I could see it on everyone’s faces – they knew what I was. What I had become. I found my mother praying quietly one night by the window, in a voice too quiet for me to hear, but I knew well enough what she wished. And the next morning I awoke to the burn of the sign on my bosom. I have never been so terrified in my life. Before I could even get dressed, there was a knock on my door, hard and booming. ‘Florabelle, you have a visitor.’ There was no joy in the maid’s voice. Not even two knocks later I have this _grave man – ‘examiner,’_ he calls himself – barging in as if he was on his _own_ estate… He saw the mark. _The Darksign._ I dressed as quick as I could and cried out while this man looked at me not like a person but like some… _thing_. He turned around and told my mother, ‘I’m sorry, Madame, but your daughter is no longer with us; she passed away in the night. We’ll take what remains to the North.’ And that was it. I heard mother screaming hysterics as I gathered my cloak and dagger. I was able to escape through the window before his men could restrain me. They almost had me in the courtyard, but I slipped free behind a rose trellis and found my way to the streets. I lived my whole life in that house – I could think of no one who would take me in. I kept to the city walls, spent the night in a graveyard, and was able to sneak away the next morning by following the trade roads to Vinheim, only I stepped off the path and lost myself to the woods. I’ve been moving in a constant direction for two days since then but I truly have no idea where I’ve ended up now.” She sounded too tired to act very distressed. Or maybe this was despair? In any case, Vjurla was impressed.

“Well, where we are now…you’ve arrived at the West Bridges of the Great Swamp, a _very_ long way from Astora. Have you sprinted the whole way here?” She teased Florabelle with a smile but all the girl gave in response was a nod most genuine.

Vjurla ran a blood-encrusted hand through her knotted hair. “I grew up on the East side of the swamp, raised by a school of pyromancers who took me in when I was left on their doorstep.”

Florabelle’s face tightened up like she had just swallowed a bug. “Are you one of them? A pyromancer? You don’t look the part…”

It was annoying to see this look of disgust every time she mentioned the place of her upbringing to outsiders, but she needed only to remind herself: _She’s just some spoiled noble from Astora. Forgive her ignorance._

“No, I am not a pyromancer myself. To nurture a flame, one must be in close harmony with nature’s song, but I’ve never been the _nurturing_ type. I can barely keep a potted plant living for longer than a day or two…! They think I came from the Fivefinger Delta, just due North, so maybe it has something to do with blood of the Great Swamp, too. The most I could ever manage was a few sparks here and there, enough to start a cookfire I suppose. Meanwhile, everyone around me was channeling orbs and conjuring fierce blasts of combustion. In any case, that’s mostly why I left the Swamp as a teenager to be a mercenary. I bestowed my Pyromancy Flame to a small girl who I could see had far more potential than me. Oh, what was her name…Camilla? Carmina? Such a sweet girl. I’m sure she’s making better use of that old flame now, anyway.” She put an arm around Florabelle and gave her a stern expression. “The bad reputation society has pinned to them is purely unwarranted, my lady, and there’s absolutely no good reason to fear them or hate them. They are the kindest people I have ever known and they’re your best bet at returning to a peaceful life if you ever want to stop running from those _examiners_.” She loosened her grip on Florabelle and softened her face again. “If you come with me, there’s no doubt in my mind that they’ll take us in and keep us fed for as long as we can be of use,” she said with a small grin. Florabelle relaxed into a smile, too, bashful of showing her prejudice. She felt she could follow this friendly knight anywhere.

“Oh! Are you hungry by any chance? I have a small store of berries I’ve picked along the way, but I haven’t eaten any just yet because…well I’m not sure if they are safe or not…” Florabelle held her small paper bag out to Vjurla, whose eyes shone a subtle gleam of excitement.

She picked through the bag, examining each berry individually, trying to remember what she had learned as a child. “Okay, purple is safe…these blue ones are safe…red is…yes, red is fine…oh, look here – anything speckled pink or yellow is very poisonous, and you had these mixed in together so…we should probably throw all of these away because of cross-contamination…sorry, miss…” The excitement of eating was sharply squeezed away as she watched all those berries roll onto the wet floorboards. Watching that made her headache feel suddenly much worse. Maybe now that they’re Undead the poison wouldn’t matter as much, but she didn’t want to risk going through hellish pain to find out.

Florabelle looked up hopelessly. “Should we go out and look for more berries?”

“Maybe later…I think right now I just want to sleep a little while. It’s been so long.”

“I think I will, too. I’ve been so scared to sleep for days, but I think I finally feel like…like everything’s going to be okay.” She rested her head on Vjurla’s metal-plated arm and wrapped her petite hands around it, ignoring the half-hard mud that dirtied its once polished surface. “How do you sleep in this metal suit?”

Vjurla quietly laughed. “I must be ready for anything. Sellswords get no rest, or else we’re out of a job.” She sunk down a little so that their heads were resting against each other. “A little over a week ago…that’s when I first noticed the brand of the Dark Curse upon my breast. I don’t know how it got there or why I was chosen, but I knew that no one must see it. I haven’t taken off my armor since.” Florabelle got comfortable, slinging one arm over Vjurla’s stomach as if she was getting ready for story-time.

“I kept any indication that I was branded as hidden as possible. I just kept myself focused on battle as if nothing had changed. We were stationed in Zena when I finally, _really_ noticed them for the first time: those spineless jackals who hunt for Undead scraps anywhere plagued by the shadow of Death. Digging around in the muck for bodies with the Darksign to drag off to the North. They have their clerics and their cages, haunting the fringes of the battlefield like vultures. I always saw them whenever I was working for one side or the other, but I never really _saw_ them until that day. They’d toss men into one pile, the _truly_ dead ones, and pile the others into those prison carts like animals. Most of them were still dead in there but the ones who had woken up were screaming, I had never heard them _scream_ like that before. They knew exactly where they were, and those bastards who stuffed them in there would just rattle the bars with their maces and chimes, taunting them. The ones without the mark were being burned in a massive pile, their bones stripped of flesh and crackling in the fire. I felt all their skulls staring at me. I was hopelessly drawn to the flames. The smell of all those burning bones…I took my eyes off the enemy and felt the punch of arrows as I moved closer to that fire. I got hit in the arms, the neck, all through my back, somewhere by my knee… The sign on my chest burned the closer I moved toward that pile…I think I died there… When I rose again, someone was being examined beside me but, before I could get up, he was tossed into the flames. A hand grabbed my collar and I cut it off. They all saw me do it and tried to drag me away but I wouldn’t stop cutting my way through. I kept running, off into the woods, avoiding anything that even resembled a path for the first day. I don’t even know how long it’s been now. But I know they’re still coming for me, I can _feel_ it. That place in the North – people always scare children with tales of some massive asylum where Undead are locked away to rot for eternity… Some even say there’s a horrible dragon still alive out there, conducting grotesque experiments on defenseless Undead… I doubt there’s anything so fantastical as that up North. I bet it’s just another burning pile in a wasteland. They just… _burn_ the curse out of us and feed the flame with more bodies until there are no more of us left.”

Vjurla turned her head to see if Florabelle was still listening, but she was met only with heavy breathing. She was even more beautiful in her dreaming state. Vjurla laughed softly to herself, petted the older girl’s head, and closed her own eyes to let sleep finally take her. Thoughts of whatever mysterious horrors waited in the North slowly melted away as the healing warmth of darkness consumed her…

 

A gentle flame dressed the other woman’s hand, much like the fire she had once worn over her own hand. She couldn’t feel it’s warmth in her palm. The only sensation she could feel was a great emptiness in her chest, tearing away at her heart and lungs. She stared into the woman’s sunken eyes, moans of pain spilling out of her toothless mouth. Vjurla wanted to reach out and caress that mutilated face, to soothe her agony and grief, but she didn’t realize there was a knife in her hand as she reached out to touch her. She just kept stabbing the woman in the face and her knife thrusts became harder, trying to put her out of her misery as quickly as possible, but she simply wouldn’t die…

“VJURLA!” came a sharp whisper. She woke immediately from the nightmare. “VJURLA – THEY FOUND US.”

The sky was a deep, mournful blue; they had only been asleep for a few short hours. The creak of wagon wheels drew closer.

“Check that old shack, I see tracks,” someone called out.

Vjurla’s heart jumped into her throat. She immediately turned to Florabelle and moved into a ready crouch. “They’re coming over here. Climb back into that pantry and I’ll deal with them myself.”

“No, no no no! Don’t leave me alone! I don’t want them to hurt you!” Florabelle whispered.

“You have to listen to me: if I can’t take all of them out, I want you to stay here until the sun is well overhead and follow the path East. Stay close to trees with patches of purple moss, that’s the safest way. It’s a day’s walk to my village, just follow the moss until you start seeing torches. Tell them I sent you and ask to be a student of pyromancy – they will not turn you away.” She peeked through the wood and saw a dark-armored man with a mace walking toward their hiding place.

Florabelle held her hand tightly and placed a pendant in her palm, bearing a mysterious crest. “Please, don’t ever forget me,” she said, tears streaming down her face. Vjurla lost herself in those bewitching eyes for a moment too long and caressed her delicate cheek. But she tore herself away and unsheathed her sword at lightning speed.

“I won’t.” 

_I promise..._

The last time she ever saw Florabelle, she watched her back into the pantry before spinning around and stabbing their intruder in the face.

“Hey! What happened!!” the men at the cart called out as they watched their scout fall lifeless to the ground. In the next moment there were six of them rushing over to his corpse. 

Vjurla sprang forth, skewering a man on her blade and using him as a shield to move out into the open. One of them emitted a blast of force which threw her to the ground and they all crowded around to crush her with their maces but she was able to roll out of the way just in time. She cut broad swings into them, knocking several of them back at once, but the men outside of her range kept singing miracles of healing, their bells and chimes filling the air. She knew she couldn’t keep this up forever; she was losing stamina fast with every thrust and slice. When the wave of attacks fell on her, she lifted her blade to use as a shield…and it was immediately broken to shards, reduced to a useless hilt. One of them crept up behind her and landed a devastating blow on her spine, throwing her helplessly to the ground.

As she lay there throbbing in pain, they tore the plate mail off her battered body and turned her over, revealing the Darksign. “We got another one!” They flipped Vjurla back over and dragged her by the ankles, drowning her in mud as they carried her to the cart. As she was stuffed into that cage thick with convulsing hollows, she realized that she had never let go of the pendant. She clutched it tightly to her heart and wiped the mud out of her eyes with the other hand, peering out toward the ruined shack. There was no one waving _goodbye_ to her, no one crying out for help or trying to chase the cart down to rescue her; Florabelle had listened to her, and would hopefully follow her directions to the old village she grew up in. _Good girl,_ she thought.

Her legs hanging out of the cage, Vjurla clasped the necklace at the nape of her neck and looked out through the trees. She couldn’t see the northern mountains from here, but they would probably grow visible within a day or two if they continued in this direction. In a week, she’d either be burning alive in a pile of hollows, locked away in an asylum somewhere, or getting experimented on by some horrid monster. But none of that mattered now; amidst the moaning and biting that surrounded her in this rolling prison, Vjurla clutched the pendant and finally let herself cry. _Please be safe. Please follow the path I told you. Please…don’t forget me, either…_


	2. Song of Stone

_Eleven days._

The hunger that had torn through Vjurla on the first days of this voyage faded to a distant memory, and all that badgered her belly now was despair. She held the cold pendant to her lips, breathing warmth onto its crest to keep it from frosting over. Her legs, she could do nothing for them now; the frost had taken them, withering them into ebon husks inside iced steel leggings. They hadn’t felt like a part of her in so long, hanging out of her rolling prison like grim ornaments. “Haah, haah,” she breathed tremulously. It was all she could do to keep the pendant warm in her hands, as if it pulsed the same blood that flowed in her veins.

It was in the black of night when she first saw those maleficent shapes choke out the stars, swelling larger in the hour that it took to close the distance. Tremendous towers void of torchlight, spilling into each other’s shadows like the interlacing necks of a hydra. Its meal had arrived.

_Eighteen days._

Vjurla lay barely conscious against the freezing stone floor of her cell as grey light filtered through the bars directly overhead. She had not moved from where they had dropped her, a patch of her bare skull sticky with blood from where she had collided with the floor. She had not noticed at first, but the place smelled of urine and death. A deep red stain painted one corner of the cell; what remained of its former occupant, she assumed.

When their cart had arrived, they were all herded into a great open hall that led up to stairs for as far as the eye could see. Its steps were bloodied by the footprints of countless Undead who had been forced into captivity before them. _So they had built an asylum after all._ She wheezed sad laughter through busted teeth.

Vjurla had been dumped into this room with the rest of them, and it was only moments later that the cracking of whips echoed harshly from behind them. Their hosts kicked, whipped, and spat on them, driving them up the stairs, but Vjurla and many others had lost the use of their legs from the wicked mountain snow storms, so she was dragged once again by an ankle, taking blows to the face from every step her weak bloodied hands could not guard her from. The violent force of the man who dragged her peeled off much of her armor, sending pieces of broken plate mail tumbling down the steps and baring her flesh to the stony teeth of the stairs. She was reduced to a chorus of wet thuds.

She was not lucid by the time they reached the top. Her limp body skidded through corridor after corridor, moans and arms and broken faces struggling through iron bars toward her all the way. When they finally reached an empty cell, the man hoisted her up and let her fall face-first onto the stone floor of her new home, locking it tight on his way out, never to return again. And here she lay, days later, in a painful dream like none she had ever known.

_Two months._

Had she died in here? Had she simply been taken by sleep? There were dark holes in her memory, darker than the sign that smoldered on her shriveling bosom. Despite the muddy daylight that came and went, she could not keep track of time. It felt uneven. Some days crawled on nigh eternal, punishing her with its empty skies like a colorless ether drowning her. She preferred the night, when she could prop her head against a wall and look up through the ceiling window, watching the stars slowly pass from one bar to another. It became another little routine, all that held her humanity together. Too many times had she stared up at those stars and watched her gelid breaths go faint to nonexistent, vision rotting, thoughts falling from her into a dimness that spoke unintelligibles to her…only to be born from the fire of the Darksign once again, in daylight or new night, fresh and Undead like a cadaverous hatchling.

She could kick her feet again, move and stand like before, not that it did her any good in this tiny cell. The curse had cleansed her of fatal wounds and physical disabilities at the cost of beauty. She looked much like the moaning hollows who crawled and screamed in the neighboring cells, but she still had the ability to form words. Or, rather, _sentences_ ; whimpers of “mom,” “home,” and “hurts” filled the hall outside her bars. She took to leaning against the door of her cell and speaking to the hollowing prisoners who could hear her, saying “Rest your eyes,” and even holding their withered hands sometimes, helping them calm down and still their moans. She wanted so badly to say “Hang in there,” or “Don’t worry, we’ll find a way out of this,” but she had no hope for herself and she was not one to tell lies.

“Rest your eyes, rest your eyes,” Vjurla chanted softly as she stared down at the pendant in her hand. She couldn’t remember if the crest was a word she had forgotten how to read, or if it was a picture she had never been familiar with in the first place, but she remembered the girl who gave it to her, whose soft hands and gentle voice had gifted the trinket into her palm. She had not counted the days well and could not remember if that time was weeks, months, or years ago, her mind fickle from the curse, but sometimes she could remember her well, as if it had only been days ago that they had rested their heads against each other, huddled tight for warmth.

And sometimes, as daylight melted down into the cool onyx of night, and the halls filled once again with cries of “help” and “jail,” Vjurla joined in along with them with a word she knew she should never forget: “Florabelle.”

_One year._

“P-p-p-pretty pup-pet~! Pretty P-p-pup-Pup~!” stuttered the Singing Hollow.

Vjurla found her energy over months and months of festering rumination. She found that imprisonment and death was not as depressing as it was frustrating. A hunger for something unknown made sleep impossible, compelling her to gnaw at her arms and climb the jagged walls of her cell. The emptiness within her grew into something strange. _I need to…eat…through my hands…through a blade…my mouth is at my fists…my mouth is…_

“P-p-p-p-pretty pretty p-pretty~!” The Singing Hollow oft disoriented her, derailing her thoughts and redirecting them to undesired locations.

 _Damn…damn!! I had something there! My…pretty…hands…mouth…my…_ Whatever had started to form there was prematurely uprooted. Whenever this happened, she found herself screaming and running laps until she could no longer stand. The pendant swung idly from her fingers where she gripped its chain.

“You! Change your song!” Vjurla called out as she wheezed next to her bars. She could not see the Singing Hollow; it lived beside her in a neighboring cell. It came to the Undead Asylum in the same flock Vjurla had been a part of, verily hollowed by the time of its capture, probably clad in some sort of armor on account of the clangorous echo so telling of a head within a helm, and the metallic scrape of plated knees against prison stone when adjusting to a different seated position, with no other markers of who or what they were before the curse – an androgynous creature with the rest of them. The rot in a hollow’s throat made their voices ever more ambiguous, which was certainly the case with the Singing Hollow.

Over the time it took Vjurla to suffer her first one-hundred deaths, no one had ever spoken much more than a word or two in this hall of cells. And then one day, a voice cracked in the darkness, mumbling gibberish that slowly turned into structured fragments that Vjurla was able to consciously piece together.

“Ibel…iffer-viffer…mugoul a gull…in…forg…f-f-for…get. Haah…forget in glang win. F-forgetting…language. I…I for-got…! Language. Language. I…forgot it.”

Vjurla listened half asleep, mistaking the words for hypnagogic cacophony at first. But a hand reached out of the cell to her left and slapped the stone floor, louder and louder, slapping out a rhythm to each syllable.

“I-FOR-GOT. I-FOR-GOT-IT. FOR-GET FOR-GET. FOR-GET-TING.”

Vjurla felt a rush of heat go to her chest. “Hey! You’re speaking! Talk to me!”

“TALK-TO-ME TALK-TO-ME. Haah! H-h-haa-LOH!”

“Hello! Say more!”

The hollow stopped slapping and clasped its scarred hands together on the floor.

“I…I am… I forget. I forgot. Language.”

“You _remembered_ language. Try to remember yourself.”

The hollow sighed and made a sound like it was repositioning itself. It sounded like it got onto its belly. “Remember remember. Rember-bember. Bember-bember remmermemmer. I forgot.”

Vjurla reached out and slapped the floor. “Try not to forget! Just keep talking!” She grew desperate for some kind of conversation but was met with humming and nonsense. The hollow had turned its words into a song.

“Talk to talk! Get for-get! Bember-bember I for-got~!......language.”

Whatever Vjurla said to it, it didn’t seem to be listening anymore. But it seemed to be having a lot of fun and she couldn’t help but smile for the first time in ages. The first days of its singing were sleepless. Vjurla joined in with its singing and chanting, throwing in a question every now and then (“Do you remember anything yet?”) and being swiftly ignored.  
Though it did seem to be remembering new words, and often borrowed words from Vjurla’s questions.

“You sound rough. Is your voice okay?”

“You rough, is rough your rough a rough you rough okaaaaay~!”

“Haha, okay, just checking…maybe you should give it a rest…”

“Rest is rough and check is just. Oh cell my moon my brick okay my name oh heart the day-light day-light~!”

After the Singing Hollow first gained speech, it lost whatever meaningful thought or statement it had been building on, and the singing turned to stuttering over the months that followed, and the songs never stopped.

For a time, Vjurla had been able to cope with the sound pollution by holding her pendant tight, closing her eyes, and reciting “Florabelle” quietly to herself, so that the name filled her world and she could melt into her memories. She could lose herself in thought, staring into the crest that meant “Florabelle” and recreate the gentle maiden in her mind’s eye to calm herself. Now she could only resort to screaming as a means to distance herself from the songs that bled into her cell.

Her broken feet dragged along the floor, adding to the purple-red circle of dried blood she had stomped into the stone during her year as a prisoner here. _Florabelle…Florabelle…Flora…_

“B-b-b-bu-RICK! Brick! Ubububu-RICK!”

_Flora…brick…_

“Pretty pretty b-brick!”

 _Brick brick…_ Vjurla looked over at her cold brick wall and stopped for a moment. There were some chubby rats skittering along.

 _Through my hands…mouth is…_ The train of thought she had been following slowly found its way back into her mind, silencing everything around her. One of the larger rats turned to look at her, and she suddenly remembered that peculiar emptiness. A hunger that stole away her sleep. _At my fists…_

Quick as a viper, her fist crushed through its body, splitting the skin of her knuckles open against the brick wall behind it. All that remained was a mess of guts and fur. Something infinitesimally small and delicate, like a drop of rain, swirled into the vacuum of her Darksign, hissing the faintest breath of heat into its ring. She was a fathomless abyss. Some little ember of life glimmered and faded within her. In the moment that the feeling passed, she spied the other rats that were trying to hurry away from her. _Squish! Splat!_ That nigh invisible sigh of fire burned twice more with their deaths. She got to all fours and haunted the stone floor of her cell like some wild creature, stalking the shadows for anything with a soul to swallow.

_Twelve years._

Snow drifted down through the grate in the ceiling of the cell, locking Vjurla and all the others in. Locking the monsters away from their families and homes and professions. A snowflake fell into Vjurla’s puckered bloodshot eye as she hung from the bars, her face pressed tight against them so she could fill her view with the moon and the mountains and all the little stars that burned and screamed themselves silver in a prison of darkness. She could not imagine the anguish of moving so slowly, so distant from all the other stars. They were chasing each other through freezing mud up to their necks, trying to catch up with one another but losing the strength each night, slowing to a stop and being burned alive by the morning sun, only to be reborn again – to suffer through the mud for eternity.

Another snowflake fell onto the surface of her eye but she couldn’t blink it back because she had torn her eyelids off. The darkness frightened her and she could no longer endure it, even in the transience of a blink. She needed to be as close to the light as possible. She needed to burn with the stars until daylight razed them out of their dungeon in the sky. She struggled with them as long as she could, and when there was no more strength in her arms she plummeted from the bars of the window and broke her skull open on the floor. She woke again in daylight, eyelids reformed from where she had torn them. A wisp of dark hair fell over her face – some of the only hair that was still growing back. Each time she died, she lost a little more; a little more hair, a little more skin, a little more perspicuity.

The Singing Hollow lost its song many years past. There was a time when Vjurla had been able to tune out its nonsense songs by hunting rats and other small creatures that found their way to her cell, dashing out their lives to feed the hole in her breast, but all the rats had gone. The weather had grown much colder in the North, colder than the years before. Many of the hollows in the other cells seemed to be freezing to their floors, so she assumed the rats had died off elsewhere in the asylum. The Singing Hollow had gone from stuttering to wheezing during this time, wheezing strange little tunes that trailed off into silence periodically and started up again. This particularly vicious winter brought with it a new sound to their hall. _Clink. Clink. Clink._

_Footsteps. Armored footsteps._

Someone was walking freely among them. Had the guards returned after all these years? Was the asylum being raided? Knights liberating the prisoners? Freedom? New prisoners? Would she have to share a cell now? An executioner? Was she dreaming?

She and everyone else peeked through the bars to see who had arrived. Everyone but the Singing Hollow, who cheerfully went on wheezing. _Clink. Clink. Clink._

Blackened ringmail skirt over plated black metal. An enormous black sword and shield loomed into view as it descended further. Its menacing gaze followed their stares from the black void within its tall, horned helm. It stepped slow and heavy, its fiendish breaths chilling the blood of all who stared into its visor. The huge knight trudged almost to the end of the hallway and stopped beside the cell of the Singing Hollow. It knelt low and stared into the hollow’s face, who hadn’t even pretended to notice the great monster examining it. It just kept on singing, unshaken and frankly unaware.

The Black Knight could not withstand ten more notes out of the hollow’s rotten vocal cords. It stood up, kicked the iron door off its hinges, and made a mess of the singer’s body, spraying gore across the walls of its prison. From Vjurla’s perspective she saw only shadows and blood as they pooled together in the uneven stones leading out to the hall. The Singing Hollow choked and screamed over each cruel blow the knight dealt it, but quickly went silent as the knight soaked its blade with entrails. When the knight had tired of murdering the poor creature, it stepped out of the cell and stared in for many long hours, waiting until the singer finally reawakened…only, a violent death had either robbed it of its art or frightened it from ever trying to sing again. The Black Knight continued to wait, listening for the tiniest sound and, upon hearing none, decided to destroy the hollow again. It did not cry out; the only sounds that rang through the air came from blade rending flesh.

The cruelty of the Undead Asylum filled Vjurla with such hate and disgust that she almost forgot Florabelle’s name, but the pendant jingled around her neck whenever she moved too quickly and reminded her of the girl in the blue-violet cloak.

The years that the Black Knight strolled through their hallway were as frightful as they were silent, but it eventually stopped making rounds there. She and everyone locked up in that hallway stayed low to the floor, ears to the corridor, suspicious that it would come strolling back into their wretched lives and kill them all off for breathing too loudly. Even the Singing Hollow, who sang no more, would not stir too loudly, though the cell door that had been busted down had never been fixed or replaced; there was nothing but fear imprisoning the crestfallen soul to its open room. Months passed, and then a year. The Black Knight never returned. That was when Vjurla began climbing her cell wall to get as close to the stars as she could.

_Seventy-eight years._

_Flora…Florabelle..._ The word had lost its meaning a few times over the years, only to regain its importance as she stared hard into the pendant with the mysterious crest. It had become a word of power to her. She associated it with the moon, with the warmth of the Darksign, with regenerated fingernails and clean stones and all things good. Whatever Florabelle was, she lived for it. When she lost herself to deep meditation for days or weeks at a time, the word looked like a girl, soft and beautiful and full of warmth. She thought of hands and sleep and tenderness. The emptiness in her chest felt full in a way when she was able to envision the girl, as if it had been plugged with cotton, but the sensation was always excruciatingly brief.

Vjurla had been able to break free from her cell dozens of years past. Many violent winters had worn down the stones that she tugged on. A single brick – wrenched free from its place in the ceiling – was enough to free her. Vjurla used it to bash open the iron door of her cell, its lock and hinges severely knotted with rust. The sound of her demolition drew no guards.

Vjurla’s first steps into that hallway were utterly terrifying. A flurry of skepticism shook the bones out of her, whispering that it was too good to be true, that she was dreaming or imagining this, freezing her into stone where she stood. But two moments passed, and a moment more, and she found herself to be constant, unmoving from this supposed delusion. The stone floor was smooth against her feet, proof of its long existence as a scarcely trodden path. The way to her right was dim, a long row of cells with hollowed arms hanging out of them. And to her left…she peeked, at long last, into the cell of the one who used to sing a hollow’s anthem to the walls of this asylum.

After all these years the door still lay on its side, lost of its function and pitiable as the prisoner it had once so stolidly confined. It looked so small with its dark shriveled head peeking out of the curvy chestpiece. A broken helm lay half-crushed to one corner, but she could tell from the markings what it once had looked like: an onion.

“You’re from Catarina,” she said with a gasp. _Of course!_ She had known few knights from the land of Catarina, but not one of them was forgettable in the slightest. They brimmed with mirth and songs and stories too fantastic to believe. She had heard once that almost none of them was a knight by choice; most of them live out their lives as artists and are drawn into service as protectors only by random selection. After serving some odd years by the blade, they are given a choice to return to their arts or continue their service in a higher position. It was obvious what most of them chose. She always wanted to see the home they sang so proudly for.

This Catarina knight would never have that choice. There was no more fight left in this hollow, nor any song. She knelt to see its eyes but saw nothing of a person in there. No matter how much she tugged at its arm or whispered into its wrinkled ears, she could get no response from the broken knight. Nothing had ever filled her with so much rage before, seeing what this asylum had done to such a wonderfully gentle creature whose only salvation had been song.

“Please…sing one more time for me…” she begged, tears stinging her eyes. But there was nothing. Not even a sound from its breathing.

It was in that moment that she vowed to break the Black Knight.

For weeks she crawled low to the ground, busted chin and scarred nipples brushing the icy stone floor as she slinked about like the rats she used to hunt. The hollows who saw her were afraid. They couldn’t seem to tell what species of monster she was. She skittered past their cells and hid in the shadows, watching the Black Knight’s rounds from a distance. It didn’t go many places. In fact, most of the time it just stood in one place, staring down a hall for days. A quiet monster, stomping fear into the tiles that broke underfoot.

The first attack she ever made on that hulking beast was sloppy from the start. She meant to throw a brick at its face, but hadn’t thrown anything in such a long time, and she softened into wet fear when the brick missed by several meters and drew its attention at an instant. She was crushed under its furious blows, pierced and mangled dozens of times, she could feel every attack even after her life flickered out.

Three more tries with the brick ruled out its usefulness.

She tried everything she could think of. She would climb walls and drop onto its shoulders, only to be thrown off and slaughtered. Open charges welcomed death. She would sometimes sneak up behind it only to falter and be smothered out of consciousness.

It took nineteen years of constant trying to finally best the Black Knight with her bare hands. She had lost her identity sometimes, all but a fiery rage, screaming as she rolled throw its blows. Vjurla fought like an animal, pouncing over its blade or dodging between its feet, doing everything she could to throw off its balance or drain its stamina. In that hour of punches and shrieks, her fist fell off from crashing into steel so many times, so she switched to her left hand. When she finally knew she was winning, she plunged her hand into that pitch black visor and crushed those evil eyes, inky black brains squishing between her fingers, and an inhuman howl of pain rang through the asylum as the Black Knight shimmered out of existence. Her whole body shook as she sat there on the floor. She screamed a monstrous scream which turned into monstrous laughter as she squished the brains around in her remaining hand and smacked them against the floor over and over again. Florabelle’s pendant jingled happily as she did it, bouncing against bruised collarbones.

She unclasped the necklace and stuck the pendant in her mouth, rolling it around with her tongue to make that satisfying _clack clack clack_ as it struck the back of her teeth. The Black Knight had dropped its sword before vanishing into another dimension. She tried to wield it but could only manage a single swing before falling to intense exhaustion. Instead, Vjurla squished her gory hand about the grip and dragged it several stories back to where she had once remained for so long. The gigantic sword dropped before the onion knight as a gift and she petted the silent hollow as she stood there, soaking the cell in the stink of her blood. She could think of nothing to say, so she simply laughed a victorious laugh and walked away. The sight of the sword had not woken any sort of reaction, but she felt good enough knowing that it lay at its victim’s feet at last. The blade that had stolen a song. Maybe it could get its song back now…

Vjurla returned to the place of that final battle and found a long ladder leading down into a dark puddle. She followed it, and followed the tunnels of cells that rolled out from an archway at the bottom, and found herself a nice large cell, much cleaner than any she had ever stayed in before. The door was wide open. She knew it would lock once she closed it, but she closed it anyway. The sunlight shone down on a nice little corner where she seated herself. Hopefully no one would bother her here for a long time. She could sit in this corner, look up at the stars sometimes, feel the sun on her face, and dream of Florabelle. Insects spilled from a hole in the wall and blanketed her as she shut her eyes. _Florabelle… Blue cloak… Soft hands… Soft voice… Soft… Zzzzzzzz…_

_One-hundred twenty-six years…_

_Skrish skrish skrish._ The brush of steel against stone. Had the Singing Hollow come to her at last? She pictured the withered onion choking out a new song with vocal cords hardened to stone in all these years absent of song. Perhaps it had gotten hungry and swallowed a few rings of mail off its under-armor. She pictured, once more, the little rings bouncing up and down along the stone in its throat. _Skrish skrish skrish._

This time she was sure it came from above. _How fitting_ , she thought, _that you would leave that depressing cell and be reborn as a songbird, flying high over our heads with that piece of metal in your throat._ The sound came again, closer now, and Vjurla realized she wasn’t dreaming anymore.

_SKRISH SKRISH SKRISH._

She pulled the little pendant out of her mouth and stared into its crest, shiny with spit, wondering if her Florabelle had come to rescue her in a suit of shining armor. _No, no, surely she would arrive in pyromancer’s garb if she fought her way here._ She stared at the pretty little pendant and thought of this cold prison burnt down to molten lava, eating the snow and the mountains and drenching the sky with black smoke.

When a shadow crept over her, she almost yelped with surprise. Her glossy eyes wandered up to the grate and met the silvery helm of a knight peering down at her. A knight embellished in that same luscious blue-violet that glimmered in her hands, that had cloaked her darling Florabelle.

 _“I love you!”_ she finally admitted in a fervent shriek.


End file.
